Suchergebnisse

The fundamental problems of politics, in the modern world as in the ancient one, have been and inevitably will be moral. To the ancients the maxim that no state could long flourish without virtue was clear. Equally clear was the conclusion that no state had ever conducted itself virtuously over a long span of years. We are all familiar with the philosophical and the practical debate over this problem, one that has perplexed statesmen and philosophers from the beginnings of history. We need only think of the New Testament account of Herod's massacre of the Innocents—an issue that conjured up, or seemed to conjure up, Reasons of State.

Once a great nation commits itself, it must prevail. It will acquire no kudos for transmitting its inner doubts into hesitation.—Henry KissingerThe search for virtue in the Western world had its origins in ancient Greece and Rome, where-lhe terms arete and virtu embodied valor, courage, chivalry, manliness, fortitude, loyalty, rectitude and excellence. Perhaps our word magnanimity comes closer than any other to these connotations. Virtue was, for the most part, secular, not religious; its implications were public rather than private. It applied to those who, in the words of Pericles' Funeral Oration, "knew that the secret of happiness was freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, and who did not stand aside from the onset of the enemy."